Efficient Biofuel Production Using Tobacco Plant Leaves..

The next assignment for tobacco plants? The production of biofuel! Just in time too, to save the plant from the bad rap it’s been getting over its contribution in the cigarette industry.

Who is responsible?

Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University, USA.

Why tobacco plants?

The researchers believe that tobacco can generate biofuel more efficiently than most other agricultural crops and the fact that the plant is not used in food production is also a plus point!

However…

Most of the oil in the plant is found in the seeds and the plant produces only modest amounts of seeds (about 600kg of seeds per acre.). Not good enough…

So what they’ve done is…

Pretty interesting! They’ve genetically engineered the tobacco plants so that the leaves produced the oils.

How?

The plants were engineered to overexpress one of two genes: the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The DGAT gene modification led to about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves, which is about twice the amount of oil produced normally. The LEC2 gene modification led to 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.

via: Thomas Jefferson University